Modification The making of a little lizard-like lady: A FFXIV project

Hello everyone! Welcome to yet another project of mine! This time I'll be recreating my Warrior of Light, Tabantuya Kagon, from Final Fantasy 14. My WOL is an Au Ra, a race of humanoid, lizard like people. The Au Ra, like most of the races FFXIV in have 2 distinct clans, the light scaled Raen and the darker scaled Xaela. The Raen have a heavy Japanese influence, while the Xaela take a lot of inspiration from Mongolian culture.

THE CHARACTER
Tabantuya gets her name from the Mongolian words for five (Таван/tavan) and ray (туяа/tuyaa), and I believe would traditionally be pronounced something along the lines of "tah-wahn-too-yah" (feel free to correct me), though in universe I would imagine that she's used to her name being pronounced "tah-bahn-tu-yah" as she grew up in a place where Au Ra in general were not a common sight. Tabantuya gets her last name from her tribe, the Kagon, who are described as "a nocturnal desert tribe who worship Nhaama, goddess of the moon and mortal enemy of Azim, god of the sun. Instructed by their goddess that to step into the sun is to succumb to the evil of Azim, they spend the daylight hours in their tents, only emerging to hunt and migrate at night. The result is an uncharacteristically pale skin for a group of people living in an almost eternally fair-weather locale." She is the only non-Padjali able to officially use the title of White Mage due to perversion of the use of white magic in the past. Here's some art of my little lady:

Spoiler: in game tabantuya pics

Anyway, enough rambling, let's talk about the project!

THE SHELL
For the sculpt I'll be reusing my Minisup Hayul that I previously used for my Elder Scrolls themed project before I moved to a bigger scale. I'll also be re-using the Dollmore Kid body, since the modded height works for Tabantuya as well. That said, I'm no longer hybriding it with my Myou doll torso to make the dye job and mods easier. The longer neck also works better I think. I also removed the jointed hands, since there's no way in hell I even want to attempt to dye those lol. Here she is all cleaned, with her ears cut off, and in a wig she (temporarily) stole from my Resinsoul Mei:

"Can't get rid of me that easy!"
It's a good thing Hayul works pretty well for the face preset I chose!


I want to talk about the styling before I go into the mods I have planned, so let's start from the head down:

STYLING
For the wig I've bought this wig in the two pinks they offer since I wasn't sure what one would work better just from photos. They'll need some styling, but what wig doesn't?
I also got these eyes in 12mm. Not entirely sure they will work, but they're the only eyes I could find in 12mm with the right colours (even if they're the wrong way around lol) that also had the limbal ring like effect. Even if I don't use them for Tabantuya, they're quite pretty, so I'm sure I'll use them eventually.
As for the clothing, I've gotten pretty lucky here as dollremi.hk has already made the original FFXIV White Mage set (in the right size too!). I'll likely be customising it into the Cleric Robe version, as I like the extra red details. I also might have to shorten the skirt portion a little and mod my body's torso to be a little thinner to fit properly, but that'll be a lot easier than making the whole thing from scratch. I also ordered this recreation of a dress in FFXIV, no idea how this will end up since there's no feedback on this item but it looks nice from the singular photo they have, so I took the risk. In the future I'd also like to make her the default Au Ra clothing, but for now I want to keep things relatively simple.
I couldn't find anything that really matched the White Mage shoes, so I just bought these in brown. They'll work until I either make, or commission properly matching shoes.

Her weapon is something I'm definitely going to make myself. I usually use one of two weapons in her outfits, the Mistiltienn or the Pine Cane. I'll likely make both at some point, but for the time being, I'll only make the Mistiltienn. Shouldn't be too hard to make, or find materials for, especially with Christmas coming up.

And now, the exciting part, mods! I have quite a few mods planned out already:

MODIFICATIONS
We'll start with the horns.
My current plan is to use Milliput Black for them, this way I won't have to deal with paint scraping off of them, especially since they're in such a easily damaged area. I'll still have to blush them, since Xaela horns are a very dark blue and not straight black, but any damage won't be anywhere near as noticeable as if I used white Milliput. I'm not sure if Milliput Black will even work for this sort of thing, since it's not made for fine detailing work like the Milliput I normally use is, but I can only try. If it does work, I'll probably use it for the tail as well. I'm currently not sure If I want them to actually be attatched to the head, or if I want to use magnets.

As for the scales, my original thought was to just paint them on, but again the issue of paint scraping off came up so I tried to think of other solutions.
Eventually I got the idea to have them as an actual physical part of the body. How would I do that exactly? My BFF Milliput of course! Even if the Milliput Black doesn't end up being good for the horns, I think it will work out fine for the way I'll use it for the scales.
My current plan is to carve out where the scales would go and then fill in the empty space with Milliput. I'll probably do the edges of the scales with an exacto knife, then carve out the rest with my dremel. This will be super experimental, and I do run the risk of ruining the entire body, but I've gotten pretty good at using Milliput at this point, so I think it'll be fine as long as I take it slow. I also want to thicken the neck a little, so I'll be using another face preset's neck scale pattern, as it covers more of the neck. I've attached some references for the scales below.

Spoiler: scale and horn references

And last but not least, her skin tone! Tabantuya is a cool toned light tan that unfortunately doesn't quite match up with any of the in game skin tone options - at least outside of the character creator? The skin tone she has matches in all the lighting environments they show you, but it's like she gets a tone lighter in game... I'll likely use the Rit Dyemore Sandstone dye, and possibly mix in some blue to even out the warmer tones in the resin. I'm not quite sure how to match the head to the body with just dye, but if all else fails I can always just do a bit of heavy blushing.
I'll have to do this after I do the scales, due to the sanding. I'm curious to see how the dye affects the Black Milliput mods, if at all, as well as the Milliput from the height mods.

That is all I have planned for the time being, so I'll end the first post here! I'll update this post whenever anything new happens, just to keep things organised. I also might put more references in this post at some point. More refs have been added!

Thanks for reading!

UPDATES
Project thread created - 4/11/2020
White Mage outfit and first half of Black Milliput testing - 11/11/2020

 

Thanks for joining me!
Coming up with her name was really fun, it certainly was a fun excuse to research another culture! I believe Tabantuya, Toragana/Toregene, and Oyuna were my top 3 choices for names. I ended up going with Tabantuya since I liked how the "five" part of the name could play into her being part of the Kagon tribe, what with the five phases of the moon and five pointed stars and all. I'm no roleplayer, but being able to imagine a character as being an organic part of the world they're from is very important to me and their name plays a big part in that!
Also, I'm glad someone else thinks this is a good sculpt for her! Sometimes I was wondering if I was just trying to convince myself that it was, just so I have a good excuse to not leave this poor girl sitting bald, nakey, and eyeless in my cabinet anymore lol!

 

Ooo you're planning on doing the same thing? I'll have to make sure I throughly document my process for once so I can help you out!
I'm still patiently waiting for the Black Milliput to arrive myself... If I'm lucky I might get a monday delivery, but it's Australia Post so I have no hope lmao.

 

We have an arrival! Both the Black Milliput and the WHM outfit got delivered to me today! Here's the outfit from the front and back:



The outfit is gorgeous, the construction, the attention to detail, everything about it is just wonderful. The only 2 things "wrong" with it are the collar engulfing her neck and the bulkiness of the fabric around the armpits causing her to not be able to hold her arms to her side, but this outfit wasn't exactly made for the elastic strung Dollmore Kid body, so I can hardly fault the outfit for these issues. I'm actually amazed it fits the body so well! I thought it would be tight for sure, but it genuinely could not fit better. The best thing about it is that because the hood has to be larger to account for the massive MDD heads, I can easily hide the wig in there when I have the hood up! It's a little hard to do with this wig though since it's too big for this head.

I'll likely alter the collar to be shorter and wire the shoulders to fix the issues. Maybe also make the skirt portion shorter, but I do like the extra length. I might see how it looks with the boots, then decide. One thing I'm definitely going to do though, is sew some tulle to the underskirt of the dress. I can get the skirt to poof out on it's own, but it'll be nicer and more even if I make a little petticoat for it.

As for the Black Milliput, I've already mixed up a small batch and shaped it like Tabantuya's horns for some testing. One major difference between this and the superfine white Milliput that I've noticed it that the Black Milliput tends to crack instead of stretch. The cracking isn't major, it just means it'll take longer to get a smooth finish. Other than that though, it reacts the same and sculpting with it feels the same as always. Tomorrow when this little batch has cured, I'll test and see how well it sands and if it can withstand my dremel.

 

Update on the Black Milliput:

When it comes to sanding, t's very simillar, if not exactly same as the white Milliput! The only major difference is that because it's black, scratches from sanding show up real easy. I'm normally pretty lazy with sanding and never bother going above 360 (and sometimes not any higher than 240!), but with this I'll want to go all the way to 600. 600 doesn't leave any marks, and is pretty indistinguishable from the normal, unsanded texture of the Black Milliput.
Here's what it looks like after being sanded with a few different grits of sandpaper that I have:

Don't be alarmed by the white patches, they'll go right away after you rub it down with a bit of oil:

Even after an oil rub you can see the 240-80 grit sections are still pretty scratched up. Even the 360 grit section has a few visible scratches at the top, and few lower down that my phone camera didn't quite capture. The 600 grit section on the other hand is perfectly smooth, and doesn't look (or feel) like it's been sanded. I definitely wont be using anything lower than 240 to sand this Milliput.
If you look at the edges of the test horn in both images you might be able to see what I meant by cracking instead of stretching. Luckily Black Milliput is also much easier to smooth together than the superfine white Milliput. Normally I would need water, and even then it might not smooth out well, but Black Milliput will smooth out very easily, even without water. Black Milliput is very similar to clay sculpting wise, not exactly surprising given that one of the ingredients of Milliput is clay, but it's interesting how different the two versions on Milliput I have are. Also a note: the pigment in Black Milliput will get EVERYWHERE before it's cured! When it's hardened, it's fine, but be wary of stains when it's still soft.

As for how it stands up to a dremel:

Again, it's very similar to the white Milliput. I used the 3rd speed setting on my dremel, which is highest I use when sanding parts. It stood up to the pressure of using the tool both horizontally and vertically, and it didn't feel like it was going to crack or brake at any point.
I was pretty happy with these results so I've now moved onto the scales!

Here's a sneak preview until I'm done with the mod, and I can write up a comprehensive post about how I did it:

Currently unsanded, and half-cured! I might've made the little butterfly cutout piece a little too small, but I'll see how it ends up when I sand things down. You can see some of the pen I used to mark out where I would be carving. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get things as close to the lines as I would've liked, so I had to make the scales a little more raised than I would've liked.
Not sure how long it will take me to finish, I'm thinking at least a week, assuming nothing goes wrong.

I might just make an update in a week even if I'm not finished, and just show how things are going. I'll see you all then!
i've said milliput way too many times in this thread already lmao